Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to apparatus and methods for forming epitaxial materials on substrates, such as semiconductor substrates.
Description of the Related Art
Epitaxy refers to the formation of a crystalline overlayer on a crystalline substrate. Epitaxial films may be grown from gaseous or liquid precursors using the crystalline substrate as a seed crystal. Thus, the grown films may have the same or similar crystallographic orientation with respect to the crystalline substrate. Crystalline substrates are processed one at a time to obtain sufficient epitaxial film quality due to processing restraints with respect to process gas flow. However, because only a single substrate is processed at a time, epitaxial formation can often be a bottle neck of device throughput.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and apparatus to form epitaxial films on multiple substrates concurrently.